Students from educational institutions remain an essential group that is consistently engaged and trained. Education institutions were categorized into kindergarten, national schools (focusing mainly on vernacular schools), private/international schools and tertiary institutions (college and universities). The activities focused on environmental education trainings and follow-up initiatives based on school resources.

Schools

Consultations were carried out in 2015 and one of the schools, SJK(T) Vivekananda has expressed their interest on environmental infusion into their school programmes. The school has pledged to get involved and undertake green initiatives and hopefully the WATER project initiative will lead towards a bigger achievement which is the ‘Sekolah Lestari Award’ (the highest environmental award for school). Overall, W.A.T.E.R Project (TOT will be the first step for them to begin their path) will be their platform for the journey to achieve the ‘Sekolah Lestari’ award.

The TOT for schools was successfully carried out on 27th April 2016 at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Tun Dr Ismail 2 (SK TTDI 2) with practical training at Taman Lembah Kiara. Besides SK TTDI 2 being the host school, the two other schools, SMK Taman Tun Dr Ismail and SJKT Vivekanada joined the training adding up to a total of 30 students and 6 teachers involved. The students were exposed to hands-on experience of physical, chemical and biological monitoring of upstream stretch of the Penchala river at Taman Lembah Kiara, adjacent to SK TTDI 2.

Colleges & Universities

Tertiary institutions within the Penchala basin have also been approached for the centralized training of trainers (TOT) activity. Several tertiary institutions including Multimedia University (MMU), Monash University and University Putra Malaysia (UPM) Shah Alam have been outreached in 2015 through Mobile River Care Unit (MRCU) at their respective environmental events. More than 100 students from the universities were exposed on river monitoring and solid waste management activities.

The RIVER Ranger Training for Universities/Colleges was conducted on 23rd July 2016 at the Penchala River Information Centre. A total of 14 students attended the training with 4 Monash University students led by Professor Khu Soon-Thiam and 8 students from Sunway University led by Wang Yi Bin, vice president of the Sunway Student Volunteers (SSV).

Training with Sunway and Monash University students

Sungai Way Clean-Up Initiative with MMU students

Kindergartens

A river and waste management training in partnership with MBPJ was held on 28th November 2016 for around 20 kindergarten teachers. Apart from the customary river monitoring training, the teachers were brought to visit an ongoing school composting project in Unikidsity Sering Ukay as an exposure on similar initiatives that can be conducted in their respective kindergartens.

The International Eco-Schools Conference is an annual conference organized by WWF Malaysia which normally attended by all the eco-schools at national level as well as from other countries. The 2015 theme by Local Agenda 21 (LA21) & Climate Change focused on national level mitigation for schools from Malaysia only. W.A.T.E.R Project was engaged on 9th December 2015 during the 4th day of International Eco-schools Conference Malaysia 2015; where a total of 130 students with 30 teachers from 21 schools were outreached on W.A.T.E.R Project info, water footprint, water Quality testing and water quizzes.